ACC All Access: Virginia's Zachary Swanson heading home to Texas as a new man at a new position

By Norm Wood

When Zachary Swanson is done at Virginia, he’ll have to make a career choice – maybe he’ll be a farmer, possibly something involving a military uniform. Hey, if everything falls just right, there might be a shot at an NFL career.

At the very least, he’s exploring a lot of avenues at U.Va., which travels Saturday to his home state of Texas to play No. 17 Texas Christian (2-0). He’s also not afraid to make a fashion statement, as evidenced by the creature growing on his chin and cheeks – a beard he’s cultivated since May and modeled after Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end Brett Keisel’s “Grizzly Adams”-ish facial hair.

“It sort of has the same coloration and everything,” said Swanson, comparing his own growth to Keisel’s beard.

Though former Virginia Tech offensive tackle Blake DeChristopher had Swanson beat in the beard category, Swanson’s effort is easily the most unruly beard on either of the football teams of the Commonwealth’s two ACC representatives since DeChristopher’s facial chinchilla.

The beard may be the first thing you see when you look at Swanson, but it’s not what defines him. On the football field, he’s a noticeable presence. At 6-foot-6 and 255 pounds, he has to be one of the biggest fullbacks in captivity.

“He’s done a nice job of being able to handle that position, and he has the skills of – when you run a power, you also run a power pass, you can leak him out into the flat, things like that.

“You know, he’s not the prototypical fullback, but he does a nice job of what we’re asking the fullback to do.”

Swanson may look out of place at a position usually reserved for guys closer to 6-foot-0 and under, but he doesn’t spend much time pondering his height.

“I’ve never really thought about it as a disadvantage,” Swanson said. “I feel like I can play fullback. Whether my height has anything to do with it or not, I think it’s just more the mental thing. You’ve got to be able to just line up and want to hit somebody.”

Swanson, a sophomore, has the hitting part down. In U.Va.’s 43-19 win against Richmond in the season-opener, the first and only start of his career thus far, Swanson delivered a cut block that took out two Spiders on a 4-yard touchdown run by Perry Jones.

“I didn’t really know there was two guys,” Swanson said. “I just saw my guy. I feel like the cut block is the most effective block when you’re out in space. You just get the guy down, and it ended up there was another guy behind him.”

It was the kind of play that defines Swanson’s job description. He doesn’t expect to carry the ball, but he has had a little glory many fullbacks don’t get to enjoy. He has four catches for 10 yards this season, including a 1-yard touchdown reception last Saturday in U.Va.’s 56-20 loss at Georgia Tech.

Perhaps it was Swanson showing just a little of his tight end roots. He came to U.Va. in 2010 considered by some recruiting analysts one of the nation’s top 30 tight end prospects coming out of high school.

Before last season, he was moved to fullback and never questioned the move. As a matter of fact, it seemed kind of natural to him – at the time.

“I think I was always mentally a fullback,” said Swanson, a graduate of Katy High in Katy, Texas, which is about 30 miles west of Houston. “In high school, we threw the ball maybe 10 plays a game, and it was off play-action.”

His high school team may not have been a prolific passing outfit, but it didn’t keep it from being a powerhouse. Katy won state championships in his sophomore and junior seasons, and played in the Alamodome for another state championship in Class 5A (largest classification in Texas) in his senior season.

“I feel like it’s a different thing than high schools around (Virginia),” said Swanson of his high school football experience in Texas. “It’s more intense. It’s a year-round thing.”

“Different” doesn’t really scratch the surface. Texas high school football is something from another planet.

Swanson described how high school football was divided into spring practice, summer workouts, preseason workouts and the season, but that wasn’t all.

Every day in school, one period during the class schedule was devoted to “athletics.” During that period, football players would lift weights and play 7-on-7 in partial pads.

Players gathered to watch film during lunch period, and then practiced for 2 1/2 hours after school. On Friday nights, the town of Katy - a place with about 14,000 residents Swanson described as split into "new" Katy and "old" Katy - would shut down for a few hours when about 10,000 fans would head to Tigers home football games.

Though his team ran the ball 70 percent of the time during his junior season, he still had seven catches for 140 yards as a tight end. As a senior, he had 24 catches for 379 yards and two touchdowns.

U.Va., Stanford, Miami, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, Baylor, California and Rice offered him scholarships, and he had appointments from Army and Air Force. He committed to Stanford, but reneged on the pledge when the Cardinal, who signed four tight ends in ’09, asked him to attend prep school before heading to college.

Though he had the option of heading to West Point, he chose U.Va. (2-1 overall, 0-1 ACC) partially because he had the opportunity to do ROTC. He went through ROTC training his first two years at U.Va., but since he wasn’t getting any scholarship money through the ROTC program, he didn’t have many obligations.

His only requirements for ROTC were attending a 50-minute lecture once-a-week, a three-hour semester lab, wearing the uniform twice-a-week and performing occasional military drills on campus at Observatory Hill. Still, the military lifestyle worked its way into his psyche.

“I want to serve this country,” said Swanson, who along with true freshman cornerback Kelvin Rainey, a Houston native, are U.Va.'s only football players from Texas. “Even before football got going for me in high school, (military service) was something I wanted to do.

“I’ve always had a great respect for men and women that serve our country. Whenever you see somebody in the airport, or walking around (on U.Va.’s campus) at the law school they have the JAG school, it’s just something where I’ve had a big respect for people like that. It’s not easy. It’s a sacrifice. A lot of people don’t realize in your day-to-day lives, there’s a reason we have all the freedoms we have.”

As an environmental science major, he’s also taken an interest in farming. While at U.Va., he’s worked at a dairy farm near Harrisonburg, getting up at 2:45 a.m. to go milk cows for three hours and remove dead chickens from the chicken houses on the farm.

Not glamorous work, but Swanson loved it.

“It’s something you feel proud of at the end of the day,” Swanson said. “You’ve worked hard and you’ve done something you can see.”

He’s used to the roll-up-your-sleeves kind of work. It’s an apt description for what he does on the football field. Though he said he had no problem transitioning to the fullback mentality, and he feels at home at the position, it wasn’t always that way.

“I didn’t ever think of myself as a fullback,” said Swanson of when he first arrived at U.Va. “Fullbacks are not really big, tall, white guys, but the more you look at our offense and the more you study where it came from in the NFL, there’s a lot of tight ends that are doing the same stuff that I’m doing. In our offense, tight ends and fullbacks are interchangeable a lot of times. It’s an opportunity for me to play, and I’m trying to work my best at it.”

Being the part of the tough guy also means looking the part, which explains the presence of the beard. The fact tight end Jake McGee offered him cash if Swanson grew it the whole year didn’t hurt either.

“I think he said $150, but I don’t think that’s going to be worth it,” Swanson said.

In the long run, whether the beard stays or goes isn’t going to be McGee’s or even Swanson’s call.